Snowboard Boot Review: Count On Adidas Sambas When All Else Is Lost

Let’s talk first about what I didn’t have, standing atop a Park City Mountain Resort trail in Utah on a 17-degree day in late January.

I’ve never liked the way goggles limit peripheral vision, so I don’t own a pair; instead I typically snowboard with a pair of sunglasses — except for when I forget to bring them to the mountain, which, on this day: that. My proper snowsports coat was at my in-laws’s place, so I was wearing a waist-length winter bomber jacket with an autumn-weight rainjacket as a waterproof shell. That combo kept my torso dry, but because of the limited body coverage, every time my butt hit the mountain — be it when I was strapping into my board or, as the day went on, eating shit — fistfulls of slope would do flume runs down Ned Canyon.

My gloves were adequate but old, with palm padding that was breaking down in real time, leaving trails of tiny black debris on anything I touched. And though I have a helmet, I can’t remember when I bought it, or why: it’s a Burton RED model colored a shade of deep brown that would prompt a living coil of feces to remark, “Christ, that looks like shit,” with a spherical shape that will be sub-optimal if aerodynamics ever actually matter in my riding. It had been five years since my last snowboarding session, and since my Park City outing was one of opportunity during a work trip to Utah for the Sundance Film Festival, my preparation had entailed simply raiding the dregs of my winter sports gear bag. (Here's what every bag should have.)

What I wasn’t willing to risk was a pair of uncomfortable boots. No time away from riding could erase my memories of rental shop grab-bag footwear, with lining that’s perma-damp for some indeterminate reason, and assorted internal facets and ridges ready to claw at your high ankle as soon as you’ve set off on your first run. I was happy to ride whatever duffer plank I rented for the afternoon, but had no desire to plunge my feet into the dank orifices of loaner boots. It was early in my pre-trip Googling for “best snowboard boots,” then, that I came across the Adidas Samba, which was surprising — in my time away from snowboarding I had missed that Adidas had gotten into the game, and done so with a model name primarily associated with the soccer-style shoes I wore in sixth grade. It didn’t matter that I was a Burton loyalist while growing up, or that other new models caught my eye. As soon as I learned there was an Adidas Samba snowboard boot, and people seemed to like it, that was that.

The cold wasn’t all that cold in Park City, and thanks to an ongoing storm, conditions were superlative at the Mountain Resort: The area was being dumped on during the Festival weekend, with some four feet of snow materializing; to use the most universal of storm size measures, Uber surge prices in Park City started around 6x and went as high as 12x for an SUV during peak evening hours. That snowfall yielded an especially hospitable hillside, with few patches of ice yawning through and wide areas of scarcely-touched powder on the sides of many runs. I kept things middle-of-trail in the early going, since my physiology was enduring a micro-revolt as it tried to recall long-dormant motor skills; in hindsight, stretching first to give my body a heads up would have been prudent.

I was being mindful, too, of not pushing too hard until I had a better sense of my foundation, though that concern quickly vanished. The boots fit true to their 10.5 size, albeit snugly — with a set of heavy wool socks on, my toe wound up nestled as close to the boot tip as it could be without becoming uncomfortable. The junction of the inner lining and tongue — an often unforgiving region on other boots that has many times manhandled my sculpted yet sensitive calf-shin complex with its rigidity — invited my feet in with a hug and said “make yourselves at home;” the tongue is secured to the lining with vertical velcro strips that I found annoying until I realized how securely they held, and then the lining is tightened using thin drawstrings. The outer shell, which cuts a sleek, minimalist profile, laces up like you’d expect. If you’ve spent any amount of time tying your shoes, you’ll take right to it.

One of the best things you can say about snowboard boots is that you don’t notice them; that they become a given to the point of being taken for granted, freeing your cognitive energies for such tasks as suppressing the pain of creeping leg cramps and trying to process the contours of the blinding white downhill terrain ahead. After I’d been riding solo for a few hours I was joined by a friend, one who exceeds me in both skill and abandon, and at that point the day took a decided turn.

Adidas

She coaxed me higher up the hill and led me over to the fringes of the slopes, into those deep powder swamps. There I developed a more intimate connection to the mountain, even bringing much of it with me in the form of increasingly soaked undergarments. Snow started falling around hour three, and then it began swirling, causing my lack of eyewear to rapidly evolve from “tolerable quirk” to “empirical lunacy.” It became such an apparent liability, and my discomfort so obvious — frozen-stiff eyebrows and a plum-colored face are fast reads — that a lift operator gently insisted that I take a pair of extra goggles they had stashed nearby. Whether they expected the goggles back was unclear (I returned them); more explicit was their desire not to have to rescue me in a snowstorm later that afternoon.

Near the end of the day, my friend got stuck after following a man-made path into the woods. She texted me to head down alone while she hiked back to the trail, which afforded me an opportunity to go into the lodge, get a hot cocoa, and thaw out of my Beck Weathers costume. Sitting there, sipping Swiss Miss through lips flush with fresh bloodflow, I decided to untie my boots for the first time that afternoon and let my ankles breathe. In doing so, I expected the sort of muscular disarray that I remembered from past outings, after the footwear infrastructure that had been compressing my legs for hours was removed and an immediate soreness surfaced. But: nothing. Just controlled relaxation, like contented sighs from my calves. Just as I hadn’t noticed my boots while wearing them, I barely noticed their absence once loosened. Companies like to tout the brands and acronyms of the materials in their products (the Sambas have a “heat-moldable Ultralon foam liner” and an “injection-molded EVA midsole”), which is well and good and completely meaningless to the average consumer, but I’ll say this: I found it remarkable to feel so few aches after a first session in boots that hadn’t been broken in. If I have Ultralon foam to thank for that, someone get me an Ultralon mattress and desk chair and couch and whatever else; Ultralon everything.

It may betray an ignorance of the snowboard footwear industry to say, but I found it comforting that conspicuous boot tech has seemingly changed little in the few years since I last followed such things. Differentiators are largely found in materials and fit, and on those fronts I was impressed by what that tiny upstart Adidas had produced. Aesthetics can’t be overlooked, either, and the Sambas also delivered in that area.

In the rental shop before I started my day, the clerk had asked, as he sharpened my board, if I’d be renting boots as well. I told him no, that I brought my own, and then I asked: did he have any experience with Adidas boots? He said he didn’t, that he hadn’t even heard of them. By that point I was laced in, so I stood up and kicked a leg onto a nearby bench, resting the boots on my heel to put them on display. “Nah, man, never seen those before. They’re sweet,” he said, adding a nod. Then he capped it with the ultimate validation: “I’d rock ‘em.” I doubt he’d be disappointed if he did.

A Part of Hearst Digital Media
Men's Health participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites.